Over the next few years, Beth A. Tarini, M.D., MS, will make it her personal mission to ensure that more pediatric researchers get to know SPR and are so excited about the organization that they become active members. In May 2019 Dr. Tarini becomes Vice President of the society that aims to stitch together an international network of interdisciplinary researchers to improve kids’ health. Four-year SPR leadership terms begin with Vice President before transitioning to President-Elect, President and Past-President, each for one year.

Dr. Tarini says she looks forward to working with other SPR leaders to find ways to build more productive, collaborative professional networks among faculty, especially emerging junior faculty. “Facilitating ways to network for research and professional reasons across pediatric research is vital – albeit easier said than done. I have been told I’m a connector, so I hope to leverage that skill in this new role,” says Dr. Tarini, associate director for Children’s Center for Translational Research.

“I’m delighted that Dr. Tarini was elected to this leadership position, and I am impressed by her vision of improving SPR’s outreach efforts,” says Mark Batshaw, M.D., Executive Vice President, Chief Academic Officer and Physician-in-Chief at Children’s National. “Her goal of engaging potential members in networking through a variety of ways – face-to-face as well as leveraging digital platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – and her focus on engaging junior faculty will help strengthen SPR membership in the near term and long term.”

Dr. Tarini adds: “Success to me would be leaving after four years with more faculty – especially junior faculty – approaching membership in SPR with the knowledge and enthusiasm that they bring to membership in other pediatric societies.”

SPR requires that its members not simply conduct research, but move the needle in their chosen discipline. In her research, Dr. Tarini has focused on ensuring that population-based newborn screening programs function efficiently and effectively with fewer hiccups at any place along the process.

Thanks to a heel stick to draw blood, an oxygen measurement, and a hearing test, U.S. babies are screened for select inherited health conditions, expediting treatment for infants and reducing the chances they’ll experience long-term health consequences.

“The complexity of this program that is able to test nearly all 4 million babies in the U.S. each year is nothing short of astounding. You have to know the child is born – anywhere in the state – and then between 24 and 48 hours of birth you have to do testing onsite, obtain a specific type of blood sample, send the blood sample to an off-site lab quickly, test the sample, find the child if the test is out of range, get the child evaluated and tested for the condition, then send them for treatment. Given the time pressures as well as the coordination of numerous people and organizations, the fact that this happens routinely is amazing. And like any complex process, there is always room for improvement,” she says.

Dr. Tarini’s research efforts have focused on those process improvements.

As just one example, the Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children, a federal advisory committee on which she serves, was discussing how to eliminate delays in specimen processing to provide speedier results to families. One possible solution floated was to open labs all seven days, rather than just five days a week. Dr. Tarini advocated for partnering with health care engineers who could help model ways to make the specimen transport process more efficient, just like airlines and mail delivery services. A more efficient and effective solution was to match the specimen pick-up and delivery times more closely with the lab’s operational times – which maximizes lab resources and shortens wait times for parents.

Conceptual modeling comes so easily for her that she often leaps out of her seat mid-sentence, underscoring a point by jotting thoughts on a white board, doing it so often that her pens have run dry.

“It’s like a bus schedule: You want to find a bus that not only takes you to your destination but gets you there on time,” she says.

Dr. Tarini’s current observational study looks for opportunities to improve how parents in Minnesota and Iowa are given out-of-range newborn screening test results – especially false positives – and how that experience might shake their confidence in their child’s health as well as heighten their own stress level.

“After a false positive test result, are there parents who walk away from newborn screening with lingering stress about their child’s health? Can we predict who those parents might be and help them?” she asks.

Among the challenges is the newborn screening occurs so quickly after delivery that some emotionally and physically exhausted parents may not remember it was done. Then they get a call from the state with ominous results. Another challenge is standardizing communication approaches across dozens of birthing centers and hospitals.

“We know parents are concerned after receiving a false positive result, and some worry their infant remains vulnerable,” she says. “Can we change how we communicate – not just what we say, but how we say it – to alleviate those concerns?”

“As a community-focused health system, one of our central missions is to train a new generation of residents to create successful community partnerships and integrate public health concepts into the everyday practice of medicine to improve the health of underserved communities,” says Cara Lichtenstein, M.D., MPH.

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The Children’s National Community Health Track (CHT) has been recognized by the Academic Pediatric Association with its prestigious Teaching Program Award. The honor was made public at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting on May 7, 2018 in Toronto, Ontario. The purpose of the award is to foster interest in the teaching of general pediatrics by giving national recognition to an outstanding general pediatric program. The PAS selection committee chose Children’s CHT for demonstrating excellence in educational teaching methods, acceptance by the community, its adaptability and the outstanding quality of residents trained in the program.

“As a community-focused health system, one of our central missions is to train a new generation of residents to create successful community partnerships and integrate public health concepts into the everyday practice of medicine to improve the health of underserved communities,” says Cara Lichtenstein, M.D., MPH and director of Children’s Community Health Track.

Children’s CHT focuses on underserved populations and the development of skills in health policy, advocacy and community healthcare delivery. Residents spend their outpatient time learning to use public health techniques to identify and address community health needs, becoming a physician advocate and learning more about the sociocultural determinants of health and health disparities. Training for CHT is integrated with Children’s overall pediatrics residency program to ensure excellence in attainment of clinical skills, and to allow residents the opportunity to work with Children’s top-rated primary care, specialty and hospital-based physicians and care teams.

This is the third time in recent years that Children’s National has been honored by the Academic Pediatric Association. In 2013, Mary Ottolini, M.D., MPH and vice chair of medical education was recognized for her leadership of Children’s Master Teacher Leadership Development program. In 2009, Denice Cora-Bramble, M.D., MBA accepted the APA Health Care Delivery Award for the Goldberg Center for Community Pediatric Health at Children’s National.

Children’s offers up to eight residency positions each year designated as Community Health Track positions. The goals of the track are centered on the core competencies of community pediatrics as described by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Primarily to train residents to:

Grasp the breadth of diversity inherent in the pediatric population and be familiar with health-related implications of cultural beliefs and practices of groups represented in the community.

Recognize the role of the pediatrician in identifying needs and facilitating access to resources for patients, families and communities.

Be aware of the risks to health and barriers to care for underserved children in Washington, D.C., and demonstrate skill in improving access to continuous comprehensive health maintenance.

Appreciate key issues related to the pediatrician’s role and interactions with local community agencies and advocacy groups.

Value the role of schools and childcare settings in supporting the educational and psychosocial development of children and adolescents.

Apply key principles about health promotion and disease prevention for children and adolescents over a set period of time.

Observe, interpret and report observations about the communities in which they serve.

The fundamental difference in this track compared to the more traditional Categorical Track lies in the outpatient experiences that occur in all three years of training. The CHT utilizes these outpatient experiences to help residents to attain a well-rounded community pediatrics experience.

“Washington, D.C. is an incredibly diverse community with large numbers of vulnerable children and families from D.C. and all over the world. Given our location in our nation’s capital, residents and faculty have the unique opportunity to work with national professional and advocacy organizations that are influencing policy – both locally and nationally – as it relates to children, families and health care,” says Mark Weissman, M.D., chief of general pediatrics and community health at Children’s National. “We’re thrilled to be recognized with the Academic Pediatric Association’s Teaching Program Award and grateful to Dr. Lichtenstein for her leadership and commitment to improving the health of D.C.’s children and training the next generation of pediatricians and advocates.”

Data from the Association of American Medical Colleges on faculty promotion show a very low percentage of diverse assistant professors being promoted to associate professors, and a low percentage of diverse associate professors rising through the ranks to become full professors within academic medicine. Mary Ottolini, M.D., M.P.H., ME.d., vice chair for Medical Education at Children’s National Health System, professor of pediatrics at George Washington University School of Medicine and president of the Academic Pediatric Association (APA) addressed this problem at the recent Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting. In her presentation, “APA approach to diversity-inclusion,” Dr. Ottolini explained various APA initiatives in place to assist underrepresented minority (URM) residents, fellows and junior faculty to advance academically in pediatric medicine.

The APA’s core value and strategic goal for diversity and inclusion is to increase diversity and engagement of its membership. To execute this initiative, New Century Scholars was created in 2004 as a national mentorship program to increase racial and ethnic diversity of academic pediatric medicine. The two-year program collaborates with the American Pediatric Society and utilizes junior and senior mentors to provide support to our URM residents with a special interest in health disparities, social determinants of health, cultural competency and minority child health and development.

Dr. Ottolini believes, “it’s important for our URM faculty to have early, strong mentorship that provides an idea of what it takes to be academically successful, by networking and collaborating with others.” She went on to say, “By forming these collaborations, they can transform an idea into a project that will be published, which strengthens their ability to achieve promotions.”

“Diversity and inclusion is an issue that is important for patients and the field of academic pediatrics because we need to have a physician workforce that resembles the patient population that we are entrusted to take care of,” Dr. Ottolini says.

Dr. Ottolini also explained APA’s current special interest groups were put in place to bring awareness to the role of race in the practice of medicine, and to provide resources by which members can support the healthy development and optimal care for U.S. youth of color. The ultimate goal is to develop strategies for increasing diversity and retention among academic medical faculty across the United States, and develop best practices for caring for youth of color in the primary care setting.

The presentation concluded with a question-and-answer session and further discussion from the audience. Since her presentation, Dr. Ottolini has received offers from other doctors and national organizations to fund these initiatives.

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